In this Gimp tutorial we will create a round web 2.0 button/icon with a metal ring around it. This button is very handy for download icons and such, and it can easily be customized, especially with gradients.

FINAL IMAGE PREVIEW

This is what we’re going to create, we will also look at some variations of the button afterwards.

Step 1

Create a new image with a white background. I made mine 600×400.

Now create a new layer and name it “ring”.
Use the Ellipse Select Tool to create a circle that measures 250×250.

Step 2

Set your FG and BG color to a dark gray (333333) and white (ffffff).

Use the Blend Tool to create a gradient from the top of the selection to the bottom of it.
The gradient should be Reversed, the shape set to Radial, the Offset should be set to 20, and Adaptive Supersampling should be enabled.

The offset simply makes it so that we get more white on the top of the button, while Adaptive Supersampling makes it smoother. Our image should look like this now:

Step 3

Shrink the selection by 25px. (Select->Shrink)

Use the Blend Tool to create a gradient from the bottom of the selection to the top of it.
Use the same settings as last time.

Step 4

Create a new layer and name it “sphere”. Shrink the selection by 5px (Select->Shrink), then fill the selection with a blue color (216eda) using the Bucket Fill tool.

Now set your FG color to cyan (4feeff).
Create a radial gradient a little bit above the bottom of the selection and approximately 120px up.

The Gradient should be set to FG to Transparent, it should not be reversed, set the Offset to 20, and make sure Adaptive Supersampling is disabled.

That should give us this result:

Step 5

Set your FG color to white (ffffff). We’re going to use the Paintbrush tool to add a little white at the bottom of the button.
Set the opacity of the brush to 70%, use a large fuzzy brush (Circle Fuzzy 19) and set the scale to 10.

Position the brush so that half of it is inside the selection, then click just once with the mouse.

That should give us a gentle touch of white like this:

Step 6

We’re going to create an inner shadow, to do this we first need to create a new layer and name it “inner shadow”.
Now grow the selection by 1px. Select->Grow.

Then we fill the selection with black (000000) using the Bucket Fill tool.
Next go to Select->Feather.
Feather the selection by 20.

Now hit the Delete button on the keyboard.
Also, we don’t need the selection anymore so get rid of it by going to Select->None.

Next, duplicate the layer so that the inner shadow becomes stronger.

Step 7

Create a new layer and name it “gloss”.
Create a selection where you want the gloss to be.

Set your FG color to white (ffffff).
Create a gradient from the top of the selection to the bottom of it.
The Gradient should be set to FG to Transparent, the Shape to linear, Offset to 0.

Now reduce the opacity of the gloss layer to 75 so that it blends in more smoothly with the rest of the button.

Step 8

Time to add some text, select a font you like and write something on the button, these kinds of buttons are very good for adding short words like GO! or a symbol such as a downwards arrow for a download button.

I simply added the letter Z. The font is Verdana Bold size 100.

Next we give the text an outline.
To do that go to Filters->Light and Shadow->Drop shadow.
Set Offset X and Offset Y to 0.

That should give us a nice dark outline around the text like this:

Step 9

Almost done know, we just need to give the whole button an outline, and soften it a little.
Select the layer named “ring”, and then give it a drop shadow with the same settings as we used on the text.

Now we need to soften the button a little bit just where the inner shadow meets the metal ring.

We have two layers with inner shadow, so we need to merge them into one. In the Layer Dialog, select the top layer with inner shadow, right-click and choose Merge Down.

Next we’re going to give the inner shadow layer a Gaussian blur of 2. (Filters->Blur->Gaussian Blur)

That’s it, the button is done:

Variations

It’s also very easy to make variations of this button by using gradients instead of all that
blue and cyan we made in step 4 and step 5.
Here is the button with the gradient called Deep Sea, the gradient was created
from the bottom of the selection and 450px up.

Here is the same gradient from the top of the selection to almost the bottom of it, and with the gloss shaped differently.

Here it is with the gradient Incandescent from the top of the selection to the bottom of it.

That’s it, it’s the end of the tutorial, tell us what you think in the comments.

Comments

Thanks it’s really helped to understand some concept . but, write more tutorial for us(newbie) and people are not so graphics expert(me not)

Rob

July 25th, 2010

Excellent tutorial!! Very easy to follow.

Bronzepaw

July 26th, 2010

They look awsome!

Ding

August 14th, 2010

Dude this is awesome. Thanks!!

hi

August 17th, 2010

thanks the tutorial is very nice.

but where to get the fuzzy brush stokes? can we download them somewhere.
im using Gimp 2.6 and the fuzzy brushes are not in there.

Keir

August 17th, 2010

Awesome thanks! 🙂

Robert

August 24th, 2010

Thanks for the tutorial! Yes, it is quite easy to follow and understand. I really like it.

JonP

August 24th, 2010

Thanks – that was really useful! Had gimp for ages but never tried anything like this.

to the guy above – the fuzzy brushes are in with the other brush shapes – click the brush button (on the paintbrush tab on the toolbox) and scroll down the choices – took me a, erm, minute to find too…ahem.

JOhN

October 2nd, 2010

Brilliant!

A brilliant tutorial. Well laid out, each step is clearly presented and described without cutting corners, eliminating time wasted on trying to find how some simple step that is assumed is done. Everything is illustrated clearly with screenshots.

In short excellent!

Thanks.

David

October 6th, 2010

Great tutorial.
Had problems just with one thing: how do I set transparent as a background or foreground color?

Amazing tutorial! Thank you very much for this. I’m a beginner with GIMP and this tutorial is amazing for me! Many tutorials skip certain steps that someone with more GIMP use would know but this details EVERYTHING. It’s just perfect!

Great tutorial ! Instructions are extremely clear ! There are not a lot of GIMP tutorials as good as this one.
Thanks !

Zod

March 7th, 2011

I am a programmer. As such, I am very much a logical thinker. Sit me down to write up a program, and I can see the logic faster than I can type, which is pretty darned fast. Unfortunately, this means that I am not much of an artistic thinker. When I design something..anything..remotely artistic, be it a texture, a graphic image, or a 3D model, it tends to be very symmetrical. I have literally been known to sit down with a calculator to figure out exactly how to lay out a 3D model.

Regardless, I found your tutorial and decided to give it a try. I liked the looks of your finished product, and it pretty much hit the nail on the head for what I was looking to do. I got a bit scared when it got to the parts about manually painting in shading with a brush. I felt fairly certain I was gonna muck it up real good. Thanks to your very clear instructions though, it came out wonderful. I am actually proud of the finished image I did, which is a rare thing for me.

Great job, and I will be having a look at your other tutorials as well, and recommending your site to others.

t0mt4yl0r

March 24th, 2011

Nice! Love this ;D

cspray

March 24th, 2011

I’ve always looked around for free graphics to create my website before but it just became a big hassle and I never found the look I was really going for. Your final button looks really nice and is the kind of thing I’m looking for…your excellently laid out, simple tutorial was fantastic. Like Zod, I’m more of a programmer than a graphics specialist and, also like Zod, after following your tutorial I’m happy with the final result.

Thanks for the excellent job.

Victor

April 6th, 2011

Love it, thanks very much! Very good comment

marta

April 18th, 2011

Thanks a lot for this turorial, it’s great!

Jason

April 28th, 2011

Great post, helped me out a lot!

It’s amazing how something can be laid out so simply by someone who knows what they’re doing.

Thank you – very easy to follow for a someone totally new to all this. was amazed at the final result – have tried a few other tutorials but they just didn’t explain all the steps as well. Will be looking for more tutorials from you.

I have the final result of a tutorial I did back in Dec. 2009. For the life of me, I can’t find the actual tutorial. I’ve uploaded the result (http://www.box.net/shared/j6izu7bt825d406bqkcl). Do you know where I may find the original tutorial?

Thanks very much for this tutorial! Having very, very little GIMP (or any other type of similar program) experience, I was able to make a few of these up. Trial and error on my part, as I am replacing my keyboard on my HP TouchPad…I have to make 2 buttons at the same time, (2nd button is the button press).

I found I had to zoom in quite considerably, 1400% or more, to make sure the edges were perfect, as I was taking my keyboard png files and making the new buttons on top of the old ones.

Ullas Prabhakar

July 18th, 2012

Thanks very much . really great tutorial.

honey

August 10th, 2012

This is great,very easy-to-follow tutorial. i learned a lot about gradients! thanks a ton, please keep it up! 😀

Chad

August 22nd, 2012

I too am having trouble finding the large fuzzy brush (Circle Fuzzy 19). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Update: Apparently GIMP 2.8 doesn’t come with all the brushes as the previous versions. I found that the originals can downloaded here:

Thank you for this tutorial. As someone who needed to learn this quick you made everything clear, concise and very easy to understand. Thanks!

E.D.B

October 8th, 2012

One question when you have a chance…I see now how to edit the text layer, but I find that when I do, the drop shadow I created for the text will not edit. Is there an easy method to keep the same basic button design but be able to edit the text AND change the drop shadow?

Great tutorial, very easy to follow with amazing results. My only modification would be to add an inner shadow to the text instead of a drop shadow. That would make the text look like it was inset or embedded into the button instead of raised on top. If you do a search on “GIMP inset typography” you should be able to find a tutorial, but it basically consists of using the Layer Effects Script-fu script from the GIMP repository, and selecting Inner Shadow.

Pieter

July 27th, 2013

Thanks so much!

devils

August 18th, 2013

thanks alot.. how could i use an image instead of text…..actually i wanna make a logo

[…] Round Web 2.0 Button is a tutorial at mygimptutorial.com that takes you step by step through the creation of a button with a 3d effect. It points out brushes, effects, colors, and even pixel placement at times. I had to veer very little from the instructions to make a button to suit my needs. The only mention I could find of the author was that it was posted by a user named yay in 2008. So, thank you Yay, for the wonderful lesson in image manipulation. […]

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